The Time Objects
by The Threat
Summary: Boukenger .Continuing on after '20,000 Leagues Below', the Boukengers are to protect a well-known literary Precious.
1. Chapter 1

It was a relatively simple assignment. Go the harbor, find the right container, and take whatever's inside it back to headquarters. Unfortunately, to the Boukengers, things are hardly ever simple, let alone relatively.

The five of them, they arrived at the container. They opened it, only to see it's filled with boxes. With their Accellulars, they scanned the boxes, one by one. Until only one of them read a hazard level.

"Hazard level... 1895." Souta said, "This must be it."

"Good." Satoru sounded happy, "Let's take it back to..."

"I got a better idea!" somebody exclaimed, but none of them needed to turn around to see who it was, as they all recognized the voice.

Masumi was the one who turned, rather annoyed: "Kaze no Shizuka."

"You can just give it to me instead!" she suggested.

"How does she know what's inside this?" Sakura wondered, "We don't even know it."

"Never mind that." Satoru reminded her, "We'd better change."

They all nodded in agreement, as they transformed: "Boukenger, start up!"

Once transformed, they started fighting her. With her ninja skills, she could easily dodge their attacks, but this didn't help her get any closer to the box just yet. But she did know one weakness of one of the members. Once she faced BoukenBlue, she knew just what to say.

"Yes, I will date you." she said.

This had BoukenBlue distracted: "You will?"

With this, she grabbed him and threw him at his teammates. This way, she found her way to the box, took it in her hands and ran off.

When she turned around a corner, she stopped running. Around the corner, she met with Eiji, who had a group of Jaryuus.

"Going somewhere?" he asked her.

"Wh... What is this?" Shizuka couldn't understand it, "Are you with the Ja..."

Before she could finish her sentence, somebody took the box out of her hands.

"This box belongs to the Boukengers." BoukenYellow spoke, as she pressed her index finger on Shizuka's forehead, "Not to Dark Shadow."

Shizuka was enraged. She tried to take the box back, but this is when the Boukengers started to toss it from one member to another. Similar to how a group of bullies take one victim, take something that belongs to him, and start tossing it around, watching the victim not being able to take it back. Although as a ninja, Shizuka should be fast enough to take it back, her rage had blurred out all her focus, so she couldn't do it. At long last, she saw only one way out. She dropped a smoke-bomb, and disappeared.

"Must be an important Precious if even Dark Shadow is interested in it." BoukenBlack realized.

"Which is probably why it was sent to us." BoukenRed deduced, "Because we got better security than they do in Europe."


	2. Chapter 2

Tempered by her recent failure, Shizuka returned to Dark Shadow's hide-out and told her boss, Gekkou, exactly what happened.

"Since the Jaryuus never did have any real minds of their own, it would stand to reason that they'd join whoever killed their former leader." Gekkou replied.

"Now you're telling me!" Shizuka couldn't understand.

"You're supposed to be prepared for any eventuality." Gekkou replied, "You may not have seen this coming, but it shouldn't have stopped you from doing your job."

Shizuka pouted at this, until she realized something else: "Maybe there is a way that I can get it anyway."

"There base is too heavilly protected." Gekkou reminded her, "More so now, since Gaia had nearly destroyed them."

"I wasn't talking about breaking into their base." Shizuka said, "There's this one scroll of ours which you never wanted me to use."

Gekkou seemed to immediately know what she was talking about: "You mean... we can't use that. It can be used only once,..."

"Yeah, yeah..." Shizuka sounded annoyed, "And we keep it only as a last resort, blah blah blah... But if we use it now, it won't matter, because if this works..."

"I cannot let you do this and that's final!" Gekkou shouted.

Under normal circumstances, Shizuka might have obbeyed, but the Precious they were looking for was too precious for them to just let it slip by. That thought alone got her to run as fast as she could to take the scroll anyway.

"Oh no you're not!" Gekkou flew towards her, trying to stop her from taking what she wanted.

A little fight between the two broke out, but eventually Shizuka did get what she wanted.

"You do not understand." Gekkou said, "As it can be used only once, we should only use it for when it really matters."

"Oh yeah?" Shizuka didn't sound convinced, "We didn't use it when Gaia was taking over."

"Only because we could handle that situation by ourselves." Gekkou said.

"What are you so afraid of?" Shizuka asked him.

"What?" Gekkou was surprised to hear her ask that question.

This surprise was something which Shizuka used to her advantage to run out of their lair.

"Come back here!" Gekkou shouted, while he flew after her, but his anger was so great, he didn't pay close enough attention when he accidentally hit the upper frame of the door, knocking him out.


	3. Chapter 3

Shizuka opened the scroll and read from it. Doing so causes strange winds to form. Strange, in that leaves that were blown in one direction suddenly turned into a different direction. Gekkou, who was knocked out, suddenly got up again as though he was never knocked in the first place, among many things.

Suddenly, the Boukengers were going to the same harbor again, find the right container, and take whatever's inside it back to headquarters.

The five of them, they arrived at the container. They opened it, only to see it's filled with boxes. With their Accellulars, they scanned the boxes, one by one. Until only one of them read a hazard level.

"Hazard level... 1895." Souta said, "This must be it."

"Good." Satoru sounded happy, "Let's take it back to..."

"I got a better idea!" somebody exclaimed, but none of them needed to turn around to see who it was, as they all recognized the voice.

Masumi was the one who turned, rather annoyed: "Kaze no Shizuka."

"You can just give it to me instead!" she suggested.

"How does she know what's inside this?" Sakura wondered, "We don't even know it."

"Never mind that." Satoru reminded her, "We'd better change."

They all nodded in agreement, as they transformed: "Boukenger, start up!"

As they were transforming, Shizuka ran to just take the box from them. They had finished transforming as soon as they realized the first time that someone actually took advantage of them taking their time to transform.

"Seeing this again, I never realized just how slow you Boukengers are." Shizuka laughed.

"Again?" BoukenRed shouted, "What does that mean?

Shizuka didn't answer, as she ran away from them, jumped on top of another container, the one behind which Eiji and the Jaryuus were hiding before, so she could easily jump over them and escape, still with the box in her hands, unlike the last time.

Although she took a different approach, she was still facing a group of Jaryuus. So she had to fight the lot of them, while still trying to hold on to the box. Somewhere midway the fight, one of the Jaryuus' blades broke the box in two pieces, revealing its contents to be, among a few papers, one shiny metalic, and what appeared to be from the steam-age looking device. The box may not be in one piece anymore, but if Shizuka could at least take the device in question, she'd have what she came for. Taking one Jaryuu down after another, she managed to take the device and by use of her smokebomb she managed to escape.


	4. Chapter 4

At SGS headquarters, the Boukengers returned, only to find the one member there that they hadn't seen in a while.

"Verne?" Masumi seemed surprised, "Since when do you show yourself again?"

"Since I've been told SGS Europe needs your help." Verne responded, "Again. I didn't know people had such a low self-esteem back there."

"Actually..." Mr. Voice spoke, "... it wasn't SGS who sent it."

This got everybody's attention, until Sakura reminded everyone: "It doesn't matter, coz Dark Shadow has it now."

"What?" Mr. Voice sounded surprised.

"It was weird." Souta explained, "It was like she knew in advance what we were going to do and prepared herself to it."

"I guess we let our own confusion distract us." Satoru added.

"Really?" Verne questioned, "That's a new."

"She wasn't even surprised to see the Jaryuus working for us." Eiji said, "What does that say?"

"Natsuki-tachi only got this box." Natsuki said as she showed the box that held the Precious.

"Let me take a look at that." Verne said.

"It's just a box, Verne." Sakura stated, "What do you hope to find?"

"You never know." Verne answered, "Say... Voice, didn't you say something about who really sent this?"

There was a pause before Mr. Voice spoke, almost as though he was reacting to the fact that Verne called him "Voice" rather than "Mr. Voice". Still, he agreed to tell them.

"As ourselves, SGS Europe also has its own Negative Syndicate." Mr. Voice started.

"Stands to reason." Souta agreed.

"Well, according to our European collegues, their own Syndicate somehow became aware of this Precious." Mr. Voice continued, "And unfortunately, they got their hands on it before they did. However, they did manage to find out that the Precious was sent to this country."

"Whatever for?" Natsuki didn't understand.

"Maybe they're in close contact with Dark Shadow." Satoru reasoned, "Which would explain how they knew about it."

"But why would they send it to them rather than use it for themselves?" Masumi wondered, "This doesn't make sense."

Meanwhile, Verne had found that the box held more than just the Precious. There was a letter that explained how others have tried to figure out how to get the Precious to work, but couldn't, so they hoped that with all the wisdoms that Dark Shadow had gained that they might find out instead. Along with that letter was a book. A so-called novella, written in English. Looking at the title alone made Verne realize what all this is really about, but he had to be sure first.

"Excuse me." Verne asked, "Exactly how did they find this Precious?"

If Mr. Voice were surprised to hear that question, he didn't show it: "According to eyewitnesses, it just appeared out of nowhere."

"And what exactly did it look like?" Verne wondered.

The Boukengers didn't know why he wanted to know that, but Sakura answered anyway: "From what the Jaryuus told us, it was some kind of metallic thing. It had a seat in it and two levers, almost as though it were some kind of vehicle."

"Verne, where are you taking it?" Eiji asked.

"I think I know what it is." he answered, as he raised the book he found in the box, his thumb pointing at its title: "The Time Machine"


	5. Chapter 5

Shizuka had returned to Dark Shadow's headquarters, and showed the Precious to Gekkou. The latter looked upon it, but didn't appear impressed.

"What?" Shizuka couldn't understand.

"You disobeyed me just to get this." Gekkou said.

"Oh come off it." Shizuka replied.

"Even if you did manage to get this..." Gekkou continued, "... there's something rattling inside it. If a machine does this, this usually means it's broken."

"So what?" Shizuka questioned, "Isn't this what we always do? Use whatever people consider junk..."

"You expect me to do this after your betrayal?" Gekkou interrupted.

"Betrayal?" Shizuka asked him, "Everything I've done was for Dark Shadow. I never betrayed anybody!"

"You did use our one escape route in case of an emergency." Gekkou reasoned.

"You mean an emergency like when Gaia was taking over?" Shizuka asked him.

"THAT was hardly an emergency." he replied, "There are far worse things for which we now aren't prepared."

"But with this Precious, we are now." Shizuka told him.

Gekkou got silent, though there was a clear negative air about him. He mumbled a few words, and the Precious started to grow larger and take a more humanoid form.

Meanwhile, at SGS, nobody knew what Verne was on about. He pointed at the title of a book, but that still didn't make them any wiser, unless... Since the title was "The Time Machine" he could only have meant that the Precious was a time machine.

"A time machine?" Natsuki asked.

"How could such a small thing be a time machine?" Souta asked, "I mean, wouldn't it have to at least fit a person?"

"For that matter, is time travelling even possible?" Sakura asked.

"After everything you have all been through, you wonder if time-travelling of all things is possible?" Satoru asked her.

"Anyway..." Verne interrupted them, "... to answer Souta's earlier question, what you had was a mere model, used for demonstration."

"Emerald, are you citing that book now?" Mr. Voice asked him.

"Yes." Verne sounded quite serious.

"Er... Verne, I realize that it may be difficult to tell fact from fiction with us..." Eiji started."

"Maybe." Verne interrupted, "However, this book is told through a first person perspective, whose name is never mentioned. Scholars have been speculating that this narrator and the writer were one and the same. But if so, that would mean that some guy in the late 19th century had already figured out how to travel through time. It is possible that the writer merely did that to make his book seem more credible, or..."

"Or it has actually happened." Satoru seemed to realize.

Verne nodded: "As the story goes, the Time Traveller shows this one model of his machine to his friends, pulled a lever on the model and it vanished into thin air. As the Time Traveller himself explained, it was going ahead into the future, but would only stop travelling if someone switched off the machine."

"That would explain how it could appear out of nowhere." Mr. Voice realized, "The machine must've malfunctioned, so it stopped working, hence it stopped travelling as well."

"So what would Dark Shadow want with it if the time machine doesn't work?" Natsuki wondered.

"Broken things can be fixed." Sakura told her.

"It would make sense in a way." Masumi realized, "I mean, she did seem to have known what we were going to do before we did it and used it to her advantage. That could only be possible if she had a time machine."

"But if she had one, why steal it from us?" Eiji wondered.

"So many questions and not enough answers." Souta realized.

"Maybe that wasn't our Shizuka you fought." Mr. Voice said, "Maybe some future version of her travelled back in time, stole the time machine, gave the stolen machine to her younger self, who saw her older self fighting, so she then used the machine to travel back, so she'd be the older self she who helped her."

Apart from Satoru, nobody quite understood how that worked.

"Now I know what they mean when they say time travelling is a paradox." Verne realized.

"Hey!" Natsuki suddenly had an idea, "But what if Natsuki-tachi had that machine? We could use it to witness history ourselves!"

"Or we could save your people." Masumi said.

"No!" Mr. Voice said, "If use the machine for such things, who knows what the effects would be. People who would normally exist would never have been born, alliances would never have formed,... you can change history in ways you can't imagine."

"Speaking of which, Dark Shadow might not know this." Satoru suddenly realized, "Who knows what they'll use it for, if they manage to fix the machine."

"Hadn't thought of that yet." Eiji spoke.

"But if she can somehow use the machine to predict what we will do, we're helpless." Masumi stated.

"Maybe not." Verne said, "If I understood what Voice said earlier, I may have an idea."


	6. Chapter 6

Shizuka was walking about, heading towards town, along with her newly formed ally. But at some point, she stopped.

"I'd much rather see what you're made of, before I send you for our business." Shizuka spoke.

"What do you want me to do then?" her ally wondered.

"Well, Outtatime..." Shizuka responded, referring to him by the name she gave him, "... just show me what you can do."

Outtatime nodded, after which he disappeared out of thin air.

"That's it?" Shizuka wondered, "Just disappearing?"

It was when she wanted to move her hands to express her frustration that she realized he did more than just disappearing. Somehow, she found herself tied to a tree. Under normal circumstances, she'd grab a knife she has hidden on her, but that that too was taken away from her.

"What...?" she didn't know what to say.

"How about that?" He started, "I can freeze time, but move freely while everyone else can't."

So as he was able to move freely, he could easily tie her up, and take away all her knives, without her resisting. Shizuka didn't know whether to punch him for doing this to her or hug him for having such a great power, provided she was in any position to punch or hug anybody.

"Well now, if you don't mind letting me go and..." Shizuka started, but got interrupted.

"There's a sight you don't see every day." someone's voice sounded.

Shizuka turned her head, and was surprised to see who she was saying: "You?"

Meanwhile, back at SGS, Verne looked through the room, obviously searching for something. After some time, he finally found it. He found the model time machine.

Everybody in the room was surprised to see this, so Sakura asked: "How did it get here?"

"Did you take it from Dark Shadow without telling us?" Masumi asked.

"No." Verne replied, "That is, we took it, or rather will take back, although it happened in the past, or is already happening,... it's hard to explain right now."

"Wait, I think I can see where this is going." Mr. Voice said.

Before Mr. Voice could say anything else, however, Souta noticed something: "There's a note to attached to that thing."

He saw a piece of paper hanging between two pipes that were part of the machine, he took it away and read out loud what it said. Some location, which everybody recognized as the name of a forest, was described, followed by Dark Shadow, but Souta also noticed something else, which had him turn to Satory: "This looks like your hand-writing."

Satoru looked at it: "It is my hand-writing. But I didn't write that."

"Not yet you haven't." Verne said.

"Okay, Verne-kun is not making sense now." Natsuki complained.

"As my idea goes, we should go to that place to see us fight." Verne explained.

"Alright, then let's..." Eiji started, but then he realized something about Verne's choice of words, "Wait, what do you mean, to see us fight?"

Verne sighed: "I could explain it all to you, but we'd be wating our time if we did."

Masumi then turned to Mr. Voice's screen: "Mr. Voice, since you seemed to..."

He stopped, as Mr. Voice wasn't on his screen anymore.

"Where did he go?" Masumi wondered.

"He's never here when we need him." Souta complained.

"What did you need him for anyway?" Sakura asked him.

"Well, he did say he understood what Verne was going on about, so I thought maybe he could explain it." Masumi answered.

"Never mind that now." Verne said, "We'd better find Makino first."


	7. Chapter 7

As the Boukengers were headed to Makino's workshop, they felt the building trembling beneath their feet. It wasn't heavy, but still enough to draw their attention.

"What's going on?" Natsuki wondered.

"It's like there's a train passing by here." Souta said.

"Since when does a train pass here?" Eiji wondered.

"It doesn't." Sakura replied, "The only heavy vehicles that..."

She fell silent at the thought.

"What is it, Sakura?" Souta asked her.

"I was about to say it could be our Bouken-vehicles." she answered.

"But that's impossible." Masumi said, "We didn't call for it."

"You haven't, and you haven't... yet." Verne replied.

"Okay, what's going on?" Eiji was losing his patience.

"It's probably something else." Satoru spoke, "But just in case, let's ask Makino-sensei when we see him."

When they arrived at Makino's workshop, said person was surprised to see them.

"You're here?" he questioned, "But then who called the Bouken-vehicles?"

"All questions will be answered in due time." Verne replied, "Meanwhile, I want you to take a look at this."

Verne showed Makino the time machine. Looking upon it, Makino didn't see what's so special about it: "What is it?"

"You ever read 'The Time Machine'? This is it." Verne replied, matter-of-factly.

"Really?" Makino suddenly turned more excited, "I never thought we'd find one of those."

"Oh..." Satoru suddenly understood, "Now I see what you're up to."

"You think you can copy this and have it fit five of us?" Verne asked.

"Well... I never worked on a time machine before..." Makino replied.

"You mean you can't?" this surprised Souta.

"I didn't say I can't." Makino replied, "I just said I've never done it before, so this may take some time."

"Take all you need." Verne told him.

"All he needs?" Sakura asked him.

Before anyone could answer, Mr. Voice sounded over their Accellulars: "Everyone, return to the common room."

"What is it, Mr. Voice?" Sakura asked him.

"I got something you all need to look at." Mr. Voice answered.

"Does it have something to do with why you left all the sudden?" Masumi asked.

"Yes." Mr. Voice replied, after which the connection ended.

"That was brief." Souta remarked, "Wonder what he wants to show us."


	8. Chapter 8

In the Boukenger's main room, they awaited Mr. Voice to appear on his screens. But instead of showing himself immediately, he showed images of Shizuka, accompanied by someone else, who bore a close resemblance to the time machine.

Souta immediately noticed that Shizuka was bound to a tree: "Hm, didn't think she were into that sort of thing."

Sakura noticed that Shizuka was looking at something: "What is she looking at?"

As though the camera-operator heard her, the camera panned to the right, where, to everyone's surprise, five of the Boukengers were standing.

"That's Natsuki-tachi?" Natsuki was the first to speak.

"But we were here the whole time." Masumi said, "We haven't gone there."

"Yet." Satoru explained, "Once Makino-sensei has finished with the time machine, we use it to go back, so..."

"So what are you saying?" Eiji wondered, "These are your future selves?"

"How come did you figure this out?" Souta wondered.

"Once Mr. Voice disappeared, it wasn't that hard." Satoru replied.

"As the old saying goes, great minds think alike." Mr. Voice remarked, "Verne said I gave him a idea, and once he found the time machine, I had an idea of what his idea was, so I went out to see if I was right."

Verne then spoke: "So at last, you go..."

"Emerald, this was your idea." Mr. Voice interrupted, "So unless you want to foil your own plans."

Verne sighed, through the frustration he often expressed with Mr. Voice could still be sensed.

As the recording went, it showed how even Shizuka was surprised to see the Boukengers: "How did you know to find me here?"

"Lucky guess." Satoru replied, "Everyone, henshin."

They all nodded in agreement, and in unison, they changed: "Boukenger! Start up!"

Upon shouting that, they changed into their suits, and started their role call.

"The Fiery Adventurer." BoukenRed started, "BoukenRed!"

Followed by BoukenBlack: "The Fast Adventurer. BoukenBlack!"

As they were watching this footage, Verne wondered: "Can't you just fast forward it to the more important parts?"

"Oh. Sorry." Mr. Voice said.

As requested, Mr. Voice fastforwarded it, to the point where the whole group posed and said the "enger" in "Boukenger".

As they were posed, the creature called Outtatime pulled a lever on the left of his head down, after which he stretched out his hands. Somehow, this caused a forcefield that surrounded the whole group. It didn't seem to affect anybody inside the field, but outside it looked as though the sun was rising there where it should be setting and setting where it should be rising. Not only did the rotation of the planet seem to reverse, its reverse seemed to speed up as well.

"What are you doing?" Shizuka wondered.

"Sending them back in time, where they can't bother us." Outtatime replied.

"I don't think so!" BoukenPink raised her gun and shot at the monster.

Just before she shot, Outtatime pulled on the lever at his head's right side, which stopped their trip to the past, after which he disappeared.

BoukenPink swore her head off at this: "I swore to myself not to miss this time."

"He must've anticipated we would do this." BoukenRed assured her, "Can't be helped."

That's when Outtatime appeared behind them again, holding all their weapons: "Hah! Now how are you gonna stop me?"

This is when BoukenBlack laughed out loud: "Idiot. By sending us into the past, you're giving us the chance to warn our future selves so we can prepare ourselves against you."

"What!" Outtatime hadn't thought of that, "Well then, if the past won't help, how about the future!"

The same lever which he pulled down the first time, he pulled it up, which caused the same effect that they saw with the sun earlier, only it went the opposite direction this time. But as they were going that way, the Boukengers took their chance to take their weapons again.

"Don't bother!" Outtatime said, "What could you possibly do even with your weapons?"

"What can you do while you're still sending us to another time?" BoukenBlue asked in return,

"You can only manipulate time one way at a time, right?"

"How did you know my weakness?" Outtatime asked.

Shizuka thought of helping him out, but since she was still bound to the tree (and at some point even wondered how it could possibly travel along with them) there wasn't much she could do, but tell Outtatime: "Never mind that now!"

"You're right." Outtatime agreed.

On Outtatime's forehead, the Boukengers could see the years, days, hours and minutes counted up, so they'd know how close they were to their own present day.

"Now!" BoukenRed ordered the others.

As though the word "now" implied some kind of unspoken order, the Boukengers attacked Outtatime, leaving his distracted so BoukenRed could pull the right lever to stop their trip, just when they returned to their present day.


	9. Chapter 9

From Dark Shadow's hide-out, Gekkou sensed how Outtatime was losing his battle, so he called upon his Shadow Ninpou to make him larger.

Outtatime was recieving the force that caused him to grow larger, but already before that came, the Boukengers had called their Boukenger Vehicles.

"You know, seeing as we're living through this a second time, I wonder why we always wait to call these things here." BoukenBlack said.

Nobody gave an answer.

The Bouken Vehicles were in the middle of combining to form DaiBouken, when Outtatime suddenly pulled both of his levers, which somehow caused the combination to stop.

"Hah!" Outtatime shouted, "What're you gonna do now?"

"This." BoukenRed's voice replied.

Outtatime wondered where the voice came from, so he turned, only to be greeted by a punch from another giant robot, namely that of DaiTanken. That punch destroyed the console that was part of his body. With this, DaiBouken could move freely again. In this state, he used his sword and attacked Outtatime. Doing so had him distracted, so DaiTanken could shoot his energy beams. Those beams didn't quite destroy Outtatime, but it did eradicate the force that was keeping him in its current form. With that force gone, it reverted back to its original form, that of the model time machine.

The Boukengers went down to pick up the time machine.

"Wait, how are we supposed to bring this back to headquarters if we're still there?" Sakura wondered.

"We got a time machine, remember?" Satory said, "We can use that to travel to a point in our history when we're not there."

"Hey!" this is when Shizuka let herself be heard, "I'm embarrassed to ask, but can't you help me out?"

"And risk you take this thing away from us?" Masumi replied, "Of course not."

"That's right!" Natsuki agreed.

"Don't worry." Souta promised, "We'll help you out once we got this thing secured."

Shizuka pouted at that.


	10. Chapter 10

After having seen this footage, the Boukengers were more than a little excited about this.

"This is great." Souta said, "Who knows what else we can do with this."

"If Natsuki-tachi used this all the time to fight Negatvie Syndicate..." Natsuki started.

"Then you'd take away the adventure in what we do." Satoru interrupted, "I know it seems easier to know things in advance, but if we always knew in advance what would happen, how could we be adventurers?"

"Hate to say this, but he's right." Masumi agreed.

"But wait a minute!" Sakura started, "So why are we allowed to do that this time?"

"Because in this case, it is necessary." Verne explained, "Unless you have a better idea to get the time machine."

"But we have it now." Sakura remarked.

"Only because your future self fought to get it." Verne answered, "But if you don't travel back at all, we shouldn't have the machine now, and that would create a... a er..."

"Time paradox." Mr. Voice used the word Verne was looking for.

"Yes, that." Verne acknowledged.

"I'm not sure I completely understand it..." Eiji said, "... but I assume you know what you're talking about."

"Of course when you travel back..." Verne brought up, "... based on the angle from which all that was shot, you can determine where..."

"The best thing for you to do is focus on the mission." Mr. Voice interrupted, "Never mind anything else!"

Verne burst out in laughter: "Of course you'll find your way to weasel out of it."

Masumi sighed: "One of these days, you two will explain what's between you."

"Believe me, Masumi, I'd love nothing else." Verne replied.

"IF..." Mr. Voice interrupted, "... there was anything, what makes you think it concerns you."

While that was going on, Shizuka was still in the woods, bound to the tree. All her efforts to break loose from them have been futile. She was about ready to give up when a shadow passed her by. She looked up, but didn't see it's cause anywhere.

"So this is how you escape my wrath?" Gekkou's voice sounded.

Shizuka turned her head to look behind her, where she could see Gekkou perched on the ropes that bound her. She was about to shout in excitment, but quickly changed it when she realized the argument they had before.

"Gekkou, I..." she started, but changed her tone, "... I take it I've had my punishment."

"Not at all." Gekkou answered, "I had thought of punishing you, but then I realized it wouldn't matter if I did."

"Look, I now know that using the Time Scroll wasn't the best thing to do..." Shizuka defended herself.

"That is of no consequence any longer." Gekkou replied, "The Scroll could've been used only once, and I was saving it in case of an emergency."

"Sure." Shizuka bit back, "Like the emergency we had when Gaia was taking over the world?"

"That wasn't a problem for us at all." Gekkou explained, "If it were, we wouldn't be here now. No, I was saving the scroll for something much... much worse."

"Much worse than Gaia?" Shizuka wondered.

"Yes." Gekkou answered, "I do not yet know what it is, but I've sensed it coming for some time. The Time Scroll might have been our only way out. But now that you've used our only chance..."

This is when Shizuka realized what Gekkou meant when he said it wouldn't matter if he punished her. If one is punished, it's purpose is so she'd learn a lesson. But what's the point of learning a lesson, if it will all end soon?

**THE END**

**... for now.**


End file.
